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Why I Ain't Buying A Mac
gphat writes "An article at Rush Magazine details why the author isn't buying a Mac. This is in response to Apple wanting our input last week."
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You cannot do everything on a PC that you can do on a Mac. I bought my first Mac a month ago for the quality of entry level video editing. Within one day I had burned a DVD of my most recent ski vacation with edits and a soundtrack. I tried this for a long time on my PC which was supposedly more powerful and was never satisfied with the results. At one point I upgraded my PC to Windows XP and found it was incompatible with my Microsoft Mouse!
It is also not possible to do this on Linux, I tried that to. After finally getting firewire to work I found that there were too many incompatible file formats. Maybe you can get it to work but I'm tired of tinkering every night.
My SGI Irix machine worked fine. HELL! it is just 1 180MHZ RK500 and still seems faster than my PC but I could only get a 4 gig hard drive.
Everything else I've discovered that I love (iTunes, iPod, iPhoto) is just gravy.
His points:
1. Macs are Expensive
2. He buys components to "stay ahead of the curve"
3. Mhz
My points:
Number 1 and number 3 are MULTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. Every 4 or so years (+/- 1) I buy a Mac. It usually takes that long for a new use of computers to come along that challenge previous processors. I bought a 6100/60 to do word processing, e-mail, and what is now basic web browsing. I bought an iMac for mp3, CDRW, digital imaging (with larger images than the 6100 liked). I will buy a G4 iMac in the next year or so for digital video. I average about $1200 for 4 years, which is about $300 a year, or $1/day. I spend more on coffee/lattes than I do on Macs. Now my PC (bought to play video games). Every 6 months or so I do a mobo and/or processor replacement so that I can buy any game in CompUSA/BestBuy, which is about $250 a year in UPGRADE costs. That doesn't even take into account graphic cards (1 new one a year), hard drives (when I run out of space or when the cost of a new one that is 3X as big is same as origional drive), replacement monitors (evey few years), etc. All in all, I spend a little more on my PC use than I do on my Macs.
Number 3 is a bunch of shit. Think of it like this. When one purchases a computer, they (hopefully) buy it for a purpose. They have a need they are fulfilling. Lets use are car example. Lets say you could buy a sedan for $15000 or a normal run of the mill city car for $15000. Based on a simple look the sedan is a better deal. Now lets say that sedan had the drivers seat on the wrong side of the car AND every year you had to buy brand new tires to keep up with roads designed for sedans. Not only that the Sedan pollutes the fuck out of the enviroment, some times doesn't start for any appearant reason, and the radio keeps turning itself on to the easy listening station once you achieve highway speeds. Sedan isn't looking so good anymore, especially since the normal car is reliable, doesn't treat you as if you are the enemy.
His points are stupid. There are reasons NOT to buy Macs, but these aren't among them. He's an average WinTroll trying to get web hits and it worked.
Burn Hollywood Burn
You are the model Apple customer. You don't want to mess with the hardware as evidenced by your inability to get a M$ mouse to work with XP. With apple, you don't have to many chances to stray from their established hardware norm, so it almost always works. And that's fine. Focus on video editing the mac way. But, you should now... my firewire dvd ram/r works fine on my pc under win2k and winxp. And I'll bet my smp athlon 1800+ with 2 gigs of ddr ram and dual 100 gig WD drives on a pci ide raid card would more than hold it's own against any Mac out there. And to top it all off, I know I spent quite a bit less than Apple's comparable offering.
it's so funny that you mention this. My company sells a compiler for the playstation II vector unit. At present everyone who writes code for the ps2vu does so in asm. Can you imagine how stupid it seems trying to talk to people who say that they dont need a compiler cause they can do it in asm? What is most annoying is that some people in my company actually entertain the notion that they may have a point!
How we know is more important than what we know.
And all that "fancy" design is more than just good looks. I can reach under the middle of my 17" Studio Display, and plug a USB device into one of the ports on the back, without moving anything, and without having too see ugly USB outlets all the time. There are many other subtle benefits resulting from Apple's design efforts. Suffice it to say, one cannot truly appreciate them until actually using them.
cat
This past weekend I bought my fourth Macintosh computer. For details, you can check my journal.
Disclaimer: I do not play games on my computer. The only thing I load up is MAME about once every month or so just as a stress-releiver.
That said: I have found Macintosh computers to be very low-cost in terms of life-time expenses. Yes, up-front costs are lower for PCs, but having used PCs (my job requires PC use, and I have done tech support on them before), they are far less hassle and expense to keep running well.
In addition, Macs tend to have a longer life than a comperable PC. I admit that you can throw Linux onto an older 486 or original Pentium, but most users will not do that. Most Mac users will hold onto their Macs for several years, even in its original configuration.
So comparing up-front costs does not give you the entire story.
Also remember that you cannot put a price tag on ease of use and ability to get things done.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
That's what everybody seems to forget in all this: Most people don't do the stuff that a Mac is so great for. A lot of people do though, and those people are the core of Apple's market.
What apple needs to do is encourage more people to do the things Macs are good for. They don't need to sell to the people who don't care about a G4's performance on photoshop, they need to see that more people need to use photoshop and have it be fast.
No one has ever been impressed with how fast or reliably my G4 surfs the internet: you don't need a lot of speed or reliability to surf the internet. They are impressed when I create cool pictures, edit movies and animate 3D movies.
OS X has already done everything Apple can do to impress the Linux and non-casual Windoze users. Someone who only plays games and programs is never going to need a Mac. Apple needs to encourage more people to be content producers, not cater to people who are not content producers.
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
Actually Dell does have a combo DVD+RW/CD-RW for $429. Of course adding it STILL throws this guys numbers off.
The PowerMac also comes with a Nvidia GeForce4 MX while the stock Dell he is comparing it too has a GeForce2. I really don't know much about graphics cards so when I tried to recreate his comparison I upgraded them both to a GeForce4 Titanium which cut down the price difference some more. You also have to add the Dell movie studio package to get the FireWire ports that are standard on the Mac.
The Mac also has Gigabit ethernet which isn't an option on the Dell. Not quite sure what the value of Apple's built in ethernet card is.
The Dell has a "faster" (as in more Mhz) chip but the actual performance difference probably depends on what you are doing with it. From what I have seen it seems intel's clock speed advantage translates into a real performance advangtage but Altavec MORE than makes up for it when it can be used. So in general computing the Wintel machine wins; in mutlimedia stuff the Mac wins. In my own use mulitimedia tasks are the only processor intensive stuff I do. I will notice a perfomance advantage in FinalCut Pro but not in my wordprocessor.
Comparing the bundled software is difficult because the bundles are so different. The Dell comes with more productivity stuff; the Mac with multimedia and of course the DevTools CD. Overall, I think the Mac software bundle probably has a pretty significant edge in both quantity and quality.
Still trying to match up bullet points on spec sheets item for item, the Dell is still significantly cheaper.
Of course industrial design, the relative quality of the components and engineering don't show up on a bare spec sheet nor does even more intangible elements like "ease of use" and the like. The consensus opinion seems to be that in quality of engineering and in the attention to "intagibles" the Mac again has a significant edge. Is it worth the price premium? I guess that is for consumers to decide.
This is because I can't use their laptop's keyboards. I need the key to the left of the 'A' to be a Ctrl key. This is not just a want; it is a genuine need based upon ergonomic reasons .
Apple's cost to satisfy my keyboard desires is small: re-design their laptops to use USB keyboards just like the rest of their line. Unfortunately for me, Apple hasn't done this yet. Their laptops still use the ADB keyboards, which are horribly broken-by-design. ADB keyboards are a vestage of the old insanely-bad input devices days, when Apple didn't have an industrial-strength unix core.
Apple: Please fix your laptop keyboards! Please re-design your laptop motherboards to use a modern up-to-date USB keyboard, to go along with your 30-year old modern up-to-date unix OS!!
My standard rant follows:
Apple Laptop Keyboards are Unacceptable to Unix Users
Apple designs horrible keyboards. ADB keyboards (which are still used on all of Apple's laptops) are unusable to unix users who need a Ctrl key to the left of the 'A'.
Proper Keyboard Design
- When a key is pressed, the keyboard sends a keyPress
event.
- When a key is released, the keyboard sends a keyRelease
event.
- Each key is assigned a different keycode.
Nothing more, nothing less.ADB Keyboard Mis-design
- When the key to the left of the 'A' (CapsLock) is
pressed, the ADB keyboard sends both a keyPress event
and a keyRelease event.
- When the CapsLock key is then released, the ADB keyboard
sends NO events.
- When the CapsLock key is next pressed, the ADB keyboard
sends NO events.
- When the CapsLock key is then released, the ADB keyboard
sends both a keyPress event and a keyRelease
event.
- The above cycle repeats over and over.
This is WRONG ! Apple's ADB keyboards are broken by design.Unix Users Cannot Use Apple's ADB Keyboards
What this means is that unix users who need the key to the left of the 'A' to be a Ctrl key cannot use Apple ADB keyboards. You can easily reprogram the CapsLock key to be a Ctrl key and get rid of the badness of the CapsLock key, but you can't get the required goodness of the Ctrl key to the left of the 'A'.
Apple Loses Sales to Unix Users
All Apple laptops have the horrible broken-by-design ADB keyboards which are unusable to unix users. I want to buy an Apple laptop, but I cannot and will not until Apple builds input devices usable by unix users.
I asked about which system you're speaking of because I am yet to find a PC notebook that implements the full ACPI spec. The best I've seen is systems that modify the CPU clock duty cycle, and while helpful, it doesn't improve battery life very much. The G4's implement full ACPI, summarized here, at least when it comes to CPU power.
Why newer macs are better than 6 years ago... Well, the soft power switch always works even if the CPU is totally crashed. Just hold it in for 5 seconds or so. I think there's a one-shot in discreet hooked to a solidstate relay. Just guessing. Commodity components, like SDRAM, IDE allows some upgrades "on the cheap". Gigabit ethernet built in. The beige boxes only had 10Mbps when 100Mbps was cost effective. Oh, and you don't need a crossover cable to hook one machine to the other...it swaps the pairs for you in hardware. You can put a system into "Target Disk Mode" by pressing T at bootup. Connect it to another computer with a firewire cable, and viola, disk appears on other system. Very useful for service, just root around the building with my TiBook and a cable. How about a monitor with only one cable? OS X is nice, although BSD isn't Linux. I still run all Linux outside the firewalls and its going to stay that way.
And 6 years ago, I mostly used floppies for booting up a dead system. Other than that, network or Zip.
I owned an original Macintosh. I've maintained farily decent sized networks (100+) of them, and used them secondarily for the past 6 years, and before that maintained smaller networks of them. And I totally agree with your opinion, when it comes to the older stuff. Mac OS 7.x was a total pain to network with, especially printing was unreliable. And running core OS against an emulator! WTF is that? 8.x shaped things up a bit. Then there is SCSI and "special" RAM in those old systems. Not knocking SCSI, just they used 8-bit and SCSI CDROMs are expensive and always seem to fail after the warranty expires.
Apple has changed a lot for the better. The cute image is to capture people's attention. There's a lot of thought in the design too. It's just not obvious until one uses the stuff. And I think their staying out of the commodity market is by design, because it enables them to continue innovation.
So, yes I am a somewhat new Apple fan, although a long time user and maintainer. I initially felt like it was an awful lot of money to spend on computers, although I now feel it is worth it. I spend a lot less time working on my computers and more time working with them.
cat